43. John W. Winkler
(1894-1979)
Chow Seller, Chinatown, San Francisco

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Winkler: Chow Seller

Chow Seller, Chinatown, San Francisco

Etching, 1916, 125 x 90 mm., Winkler 13. Fine, early impression on japan tissue with good margins, signed in pencil at the lower right (later impressions were signed in the middle); old hinges in the margin. Winkler was born in Vienna, Austria, to a wealthy and well-connected family. Destined for a government career, he talked his family into granting him a wanderjahr in America, for he was totally fascinated by “The Wild West” – the result of reading too many bad novels. He arrived here at the age of sixteen and never went back. Eventually he became an etcher. Everything about Winkler is a muddle, except the quality of his art. He was a born etcher, one of the best America ever had, but he reprinted plates throughout his life, mixed up titles, was vague on dates and closed-mouth on biographical information, absorbed the wrong artistic influences when he traveled to Europe and, in general, was probably his own worst enemy. Despite this, his early etchings of San Francisco’s wharves, its hills, and its Chinatown are among the treasures of American twentieth-century art.

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